'Sup?

So it's been a while since I've posted and things have been very busy. I left my job at ASU and started with a new company. It's the first time I've not worked for a University so it's different but so far it has been pretty fun. Every morning I get a $20 credit towards drinks in the vending machine. I find it very tempting to see if I can fit $20 worth of drinks in my purse and just take them home. Do you think they would notice?

Anyway, the best thing about the new job is that I now pick up Z after school... sorry Tia Rhea for the pink slip :(.... This week has been busy crazy and my house is messier than it was when I was working full time - how is that possible... isn't it supposed to be sparkling clean now? I was a bit afraid that by going part time, I would lose my identity. I'm not sure what I even mean by that... just that I don't want to get so wrapped up in my family that my own life has no meaning beyond them... not that family isn't like the best thing ever... just that I know I need other things in my life, too.

So I feel very blessed at this point in my life. I can't say things are perfect. But I feel very blessed.

I was thinking today about families though. How marriages just end sometimes and what happens in their wake. How traditions change and routines change - out of necessity. It seems so unfair that a kid would have to face two households, splitting time and love and everything else between two homes. And I can think of a bunch of situations that are worse than divorce - having a parent die, suffering from abuse from a parent... etc. But it just seems so hard.

I was listening to an astrologer on the radio this morning and she was talking to a guy who wanted to know if things would get better with his wife. So as he told his story, it turned out that he had been married to her for 30 years and his wife had been divorced from her ex for about 35 years or something. But she had a daughter from her first marriage who was around 11 when they got divorced and at her age (mid 40's) was still causing havoc and blaming her mother for ruining her life because of the divorce.

I think about my own situation with my mom having passed away and how sometimes I feel like I need to talk to her and clarify things in the past and intentions and meanings of actions but I don't get to. So I wonder if I will be like that... in my mid-40's and making other people's lives more difficult because my inability to let go the unresolved-ness of my relationship with my mom.

Then I worry about my kid - will he have the same? He was 18 months when his parents split and he doesn't remember us even living in the same place ever. But I know he loves both of us. Will he come to resent us for not sticking it out? And what about kids who experience that loss at a more influential age, like my step-daughter... where she already has so many memories of how Christmas should be... of a family....

Divorce is a death except it's worse. What dies is your expectations for a future but what lives on is the people that could have made those expectations a reality. I look at my son and my step-daughters and I feel incapable of healing their losses but at the same time, want so much for there to be relief.

So I guess the real meat of it is... what do you teach kids so that they will be resilient... so that regardless of what tragedy befalls them, they have the ability to avoid blaming others, to continue to love and trust, to determine their own lives? I hope loving the snot out of them... at least helps!